At his family’s plantation in Madagascar, Bertil Åkesson of Åkesson’s chocolate grows cacao and pepper and turns them both into delightful chocolate. Three of his bars recently won awards at the Academy of Chocolate Awards in London. He faced some of the world’s greatest chocolatiers and came away with a hat trick. Congratulations to Bertil! Here are the descriptions for his winning bars.

Brazil 75%

Our Brazil 75% bar  is made with an astonishing forastero variety of cocoa called “parasinho” that grows in Brazil’s Mata Atlântica – the wild forest with the highest biodiversity on earth – where we purchased a 120-hectare plantation. This chocolate is very smooth and has very expressive notes that evoke wood, autumn scents, and the local pitanga fruit.

Bali 45% milk chocolate & fleur de sel

Our 45% milk chocolate bar is the first Balinese single-origin bar ever made in Europe. This chocolate holds a caramelized flavor resulting from the use of natural sugar produced from the juice of coconut blossoms, harvested by gently slicing the flower. Once collected, the nectar is kettle-boiled into a thick caramel and ground to a fine crystal. With a very low glycemic index, this sugar is a great and healthy match for our Balinese fleur de sel. The cocoa is produced by the Sukrama family on seven hectares in the Melaya area in the western part of the island.

Madagascar 75% Criollo cocoa

Our Madagascar 75% bar has a very expressive cocoa aroma with subtle fruity-sweet tartness and pleasant flavor notes that evoke citrus and red berries, the true taste of the very best cocoa beans from Madagascar. Our 2,300-hectare family estate in the Sambirano Valley in northwestern Madagascar has produced world-famous aromatic cocoa since 1920. Besides 300 tons per year of trinitario cocoa, a very limited production of criollo cocoa – two tons per year -is harvested separately

Åkesson’s produces several other bars, including one with voatsiperifery pepper, a wild pepper that grows on creeping vines up to 20 meters (that’s 65 feet!) up in the tree canopy. All of Åkesson’s chocolates are available online from the Meadow and in both of our shops.

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Alan “Patric” McClure of Patric Chocolate, one of Missouri’s two bean-to-bar chocolate makers (what is it about Missouri and chocolate?), is a big fan of Madagascan cacao. He makes two different plain Madagascar bars and one with nibs, each one a distinct showcasing of this phenomenal bean. He and I exchanged some emails recently regarding his Patric 75% Sambirano bar, which he says was his “attempt to push the limits of the cacao in terms of balance.”

“I felt like the cacao I was using was so mild in terms of bitterness that if I was able to handle the roasting and conching just right, I’d end up with a concentrated, interesting, delicious and balanced chocolate.  Someone once called the bar the espresso of Madagascar chocolates, and I really like that.  I think it is just the right description for something so full of flavors and yet still so balanced.”

Alan also makes a 67% Sambirano bar, and I was curious how he thought it stood apart from the 75%. Aside from being a bit sweeter, and therefore more accessible,

“…there are also flavors in that bar that are quite clear—more so than in the 75%–even though there is a higher percentage of those flavor compounds in the 75%.  It seems contrary to reason, but what it shows is how sugar can actually have a positive impact on chocolate in terms of allowing certain flavors, specifically juicy berry-like flavors, to shine instead of simply adding sweetness or detracting from the chocolate.”

My brother – a gourmand if there ever was one, and a wine collector who snuffs around Los Angeles like a sort of oenophilic wild boar – considers the Patric 67% Sambirano the best chocolate bar on the market. His single-minded obsession with this one bar guarantees that we run out of stock periodically when he unexpectedly decides to replenish his supply. I had a similar obsession with Patric’s 100% Sambirano chocolate discs, which sold like wildfire from a jar in our store. That chocolate, alas, has been discontinued (send Alan a letter and beg him to put that back into production).

Patric also makes a 70% blend and a Dark Milk, for which he uses his Sambirano beans, some Rio Caribe, and two other origins that remain a trade secret. His view of blend versus single-origin chocolate bars refuses to take a side, as one would expect from a man who understands the whole process of turning those seeds of the brightly-colored cacao pod into the shiny dark slabs we’re all familiar with.

“I am not a proponent of single-origin bars over blended bars or the other way around. Theoretically, a single-origin bar can tell the consumer more about the terroir of the cacao in the chocolate, but often the post-harvest processing and chocolate making changes the flavor so dramatically that it is hard to argue that one is getting an extremely clear picture of the impact of the terroir. Additionally, even if one does, that doesn’t make the chocolate any good. It is a rare bean that can make a delicious chocolate by itself.”

The Meadow has a selection of Patric bars in our shops and online, available to ship nationwide.

This is my first experience with the bar that really caught my eye.

Only the last lingering traces of flavor remain now, a burnt caramel with a touch of spicy ginger.  That was preceded by raisins and treacle, and indeed, as the maker, Gerard, suggested, perhaps a touch of “biscuit.” The first flavors that greeted me upon opening, regarding, snapping, sniffing, and sucking the chocolate bar were something: what, maybe cardamom and/or turmeric with a bit of allspice.  It is remarkably sweet.  The bar is imperfectly crafted, with a mouthfeel that is not entirely decisive, embracing neither the contemporary daring lightness or the old world brooding silkiness.   But I have not tasted Vietnamese chocolate before, and I’m dang happy to have experienced this new creation.  Artisan du Chocolat’s Vietnamese, 72% dark limited edition chocolate bar is made with Trinitario seedlings from neighboring Malaysia and grown in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province, East of the Mekong Delta.  Complex and distinctive, I couldn’t ask for more, sitting here in the sun, still puffing and warm from shoveling snow off the sidewalk of the Hudson street shop on a Thursday morning.

The main thing is that we have been eating (ahem, I mean tasting) a lot of chocolate bars.

Our Meadow Salted Chocolates were back in stock for a short while!  But no, they are gone again, darn it.  If anyone knows a great, secret local chocolatier who can mold and package our salted chocolate, please do tell.

Also made locally, we now carry Sahagun Handmade Chocolates‘ legendary fleur de sel liquid caramels, and an expanded collection of her lovely “barks.”  There is the Palomitapapa, the Pepitapapa, the Oregon Bark.

Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel caramels have also landed on the shelves, along with boxes of his wild and delicious chocolates.  I confess that part of the reason does not have to do with the fact that his caramels are ridiculously, annoyingly good.  Part has to do with the fact that we just love Michael and his wife Jackie so much, we want to be feel their presence in the shop.  (I’ll post something on a Japanese fusion salt-festooned dinner we all shared at the Heathman not long ago on Saltnews.org sometime soon!).   Local chocolatiers include Sahagun, Xocolatl de David, DePaula Confections, and Lulu’s Chocolate!We have two of the best and brightest new boutique true bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers, Rogue Chocolatier and Patric Chocolate, joining the tide (mmm, tidal chocolate) of new American chocolate makers like Askinosie, Amano, and Taza.  We will share more on them later, but for now… Suffice it to say that both are pursuing things never before achieved in chocolate. Rogue is almost bewilderingly flavorful, with the citrusy licoricey Hispaniola from the Dominican Republic and the Plumy woodsy Sambirano from Madagascar. Patric is sophisticated as can be, playing with varying cocoa butter levels (one of only two artisans who press their own cocoa butter).  Like a wolf and a duck raised in the same crib, the 67% and 70% chocolate bars are more different than they are alike, with interesting qualities.

And we have a bunch of great new chocolates, including about 9 new single origin chocolate bars from Coppeneur.  Not only are they incredibly fun to say aloud (Plantation Hacienda lara, Plantation Menavava, Plantation Uba Budo, Plantation Menavava, etc), they are truly wonderful chocolate bars. And for those of you who look down your nose at milk or flavored chocolate, try the Plantation Tabuna milk chocolate or the Trinidad chocolate with habanero and lavender.

That’s not all.  We have a bunch of new snacky chocolates from Kshocolat, new beautiful chocolate bars from Richard H. Donnelly fine chocolates.  Askinosie Milk chocolates and white chocolates are now available, and they really unusual—definitely worth a try.  We now carry Caoni Chocolate from Ecuador, and to wrap things up.  We have new drinking chocolate from Café Tasse joining the shelves with our existing collection of Marie-Belle drinking chocolate, Weisse, Kshocolat, Guittard, and others.

All will be up on the www.atthemeadow.com soon for online ordering.  All have been eaten and eaten some more, again and again, as we try to educate ourselves on the the positively sensational wave of great new chocolate bars entering the marketplace!  The Golden Age of Chocolate is upon us!

This is an intellectually welcome and culinarily exciting addition to the small but fundamentally key (a gourmand of no less magnitude than Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin  repeatedly refers to the unsurpassed drinking chocolates originating in the “sokonusco” region of Mexico.  Askinosie Chocolate not long ago introduced its own Soconusco chocolate bar from a small band of growers in Mexico. 

According to Larry Slotnick, co-founder of Taza with Alex Whitmore, the beans in the Chiapas bar are from the farm community of San Felipe in Southern Chiapas. Only 1,392 bars were made, and each is hand numbered. Larry and Alex don’t give cellaring recommendations, but I think the bar is eating pretty nicely right now. (I’m kidding around…)

The Taza guys say this about the bar: “We carefully blended the chocolate as a 75% dark that is a perfect balance of sweetness allowing the very unique flavor characteristics of this bean to shine. The beans exhibit a very nutty flavor profile and a dry, tannic finish not found in most chocolate bars.”

Some background on Taza: Pulling some very old technology from the shadowy recesses of history, they have resurrected ye olde grinding stone (molino) to create a more rustic, less processed chocolate.

Taza’s mission is stated: “Taza is a true bean-to-bar chocolate maker located in Somerville, Massachusetts, and is the only maker of 100% stone ground chocolate in the United States. Taza sources organically grown cacao beans directly from small farmer cooperatives ensuring those farmers receive more than fair trade prices for their high quality cacao. Taza is uniquely positioned as one of the only independently owned, socially and environmentally responsible chocolate makers in the country.”

In addition to the rougher grind and lack of conching of the chocolate, Taza roasts their cacao beans lighter than many, leaving more intense fruity acidity.

Fondue recipes proliferate. Many are unduly fancy. Some are simply mired in preconceived notions about food inherited from the roly-poly days when butter and flavorings were the esteemed foundations upon which we constructed our culinary fantasies. Sometimes it’s nice to dispense with the curlycues, or more savagely, just take those crusty habits out to pasture and put them out of their misery.

The other day at our Himalayan Salt Block Cooking Class we made an original sort of chocolate fondue. More viscous, richer, more complex, and, (of all things) crunchier than your typical fondue, we ate fondue was at once more sophisticated and yummier. The only ingredient in the fondue is chocolate.

No good pictures of our Himalayan Salt Block Very Dark & Nibby Chocolate Fondue have survived for posterity, but a shot taken that evening (right) gives an idea of the basic setup. The Himalayan salt block works like a double boiler, protecting the chocolate from excessive heat while contributing the temperature stability necessary to work the melting chocolate without allowing it to separate into oil and solids. The salt block also makes a beautiful serving platter. Because there is virtually no moisture in chocolate, the Himalayan salt block does not add any perceptible amount of saltiness to the chocolate.  To prepare this dish, you will need the following:

Ingredients (serves 4-6):

• 16 ounces of the dark chocolate of your choice (the darker the chocolate, the better it will compete against the flavors of the foods you dip into it).
• 1 tablespoon cacao nibs (optional).
• 1 large Himalayan salt plate (8 inch by 8 inch by 1.5 inches is recommended. The larger size plates give you room to work the chocolate without making a mess).
• Banana, strawberry, croissant, corn on the cob, or other fun dipping foods.

Place the Himalayan salt block on the gas range at very low heat. If using an electric range, be sure to use a metal ring as a spacer to keep the salt 1/4 to 1/2 inch above the surface of the electric coil. Slice the dipping foods into finger sized bits and set aside. After fifteen minutes at low heat, the salt block should be quite warm to the touch, but not hot. When at the desired temperature, place a square of the chocolate. It should begin to melt slowly. If it sizzles or smokes, reduce heat and wait another fifteen minutes for the brick to cool. If the chocolate does not begin to melt slowly after a minute or two, increase heat slightly and wait fifteen minutes for the salt block to warm.

When you have a nicely melting square of chocolate, add half of the remaining chocolate. When chocolate is mostly melted, fold it over on itself with a metal spatula. Add the remaining chocolate. Continue to work gently with the spatula. When all the chocolate is melted, slowly fold in the cacao nibs. When all is a gooey consistency, remove the Himalayan salt block from heat and set on a trivet at the table with the dipping foods arranged along side. Provide each diner a cheese knife or butter knife with which to dig into, and spread, the fondue, and set to!

Why fondue now?

Fondue is one of those transcendent foods; it is a dessert, it is an experience, it is a social activity, it is a symbol of fun, and there is something so obviously erotic about dipping slices of turgid pineapple into molten chocolate with our fingers that nobody even bothers to offer suggestive metaphors about it. Mi-cuit foie gras may be the tastiest thing on the face of the earth, but the fact that you have to eat it on a thin slice of fresh melba toast to get the most out of eating it says a lot for its failure to find much of a following outside the more worldly circles.

Today we have extremely cool new chocolates out there, opening the door to making fondues that are every bit as nuanced and profound as crafted by fanatics who are working hand in hand with local growers ( or growing cacao trees themselves) on increasingly specialized plantations where quality is prized over quantity. Like so many forgotten daffodils, chocolates are now cropping up across a wide open landscape of flavor. In a good chocolate shop you can dive into any experience you care for, with profiles that sync up with, and groove to, even the most obscure domains of your food preferences. Looking at a wall of dark chocolate bars, you can dive into virtually any experience you care for.In the move Total Recall, the character of Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves through a catalog of dream-realities—Explorer, Playboy, Thoracic Surgeon, Jedi—hoping to escape, if only for a moment, his work a day life. (Inexplicably Schwarzenegger chooses Secret Agent.) Open your mind and your mouth to there right dark chocolate bar, made from the right cacao by the right person in just the right way, and you are likely to find some pretty interesting thing happening to your taste buds: Leather, dates and figs, dried bananas and fresh persimmon, cinnamon and allspice, cherry and vanilla, tobacco and diesel, marshmallows, lime zest and strawberry, coffee and tree nuts, not to mention a host of harder to describe flavors that voice themselves from great dark chocolate like voices whispered in a the shadows of a cathedral.

Butter, margarine, confectioners sugar, heavy cream, evaporated milk, condensed milk, brandy, vanilla extract. What does all this have to do with chocolate? Why not add Eye of Newt to the mixture?

Fondue today is mired in preconceived notions about food we have inherited from decades ago, when flavorings were the esteemed foundations upon which we constructed our culinary fantasies. Today we have extremely cool new chocolates out there, crafted by fanatics who are working hand in hand with local growers (or growing cacao trees themselves) on increasingly specialized, quality-oriented plantations. Chocolates are now emerging across an wide open landscape of flavor profiles, and in a good chocolate shop you can dive into any experience you care for. In the movie Total Recall, the character of Arnold Schwarzenegger leafs through a catalog of dream-realities (explorer, playboy, thoracic surgeon) hoping to escape, if only for a moment, from his work-a-day life. (Inexplicably, he chose secret agent). Open your mind and your mouth to the right a dark chocolate bar made from the right cacao by the right person in just the right way and you may find some pretty interesting things happening to your taste buds: leather, dates and figs, dried bananas and persimmon, cinnamon and allspice, cherry and vanilla, to tobacco caliber, the flavor, the

Chocolate fondue is one of those transcendent foods; it is a dessert, it is an experience, it is a social activity. It is also a byword for decadence alongside mi-cuit foie gras, pheasant under glass or bellinis and caviar. So why do we muck with the possibly the single thing that makes every living person on the planet feel like a bouncing bambino

Most chocolate fondues have you go through a lot of concocting to get to the point where you feel you have earned your Brownie Points. Properly subjugated, quivering with humiliation, is properly enslaved to your ego. Happy now?

Maybe that’s a little extreme, but I’m pretty sure that the proper amount of academic research in the field would conclude that fondue recipes are by and large the result of a genuine terror of chocolate. Or at the very least, it would conclude that elaborate fondue recipes are a hold-over from the days when chocolate was not quite safe to eat on its own.

Those days are gone. There are 100% pure (zero added sugar) chocolate bars out there now that can be eaten with a straight, smiling face–though some of us might admit to finding the large-scale consumption of such chocolate a bit of a challenge. There are dozens of super elegant chocolates that need no more than 30% or even just 20% sugar to make them palatable to most people.

At an event at The Meadow the other day we whipped up a novel form of Fondue. Created for the serious chocolate lover, it also proved delicious to every stripe of eater, from the brooding dark chocolate lover to the bubbly sweet-tooth.

The only possible drawback to this recipe is that not one single ingredient used in it is commonly available at most stores. Shameless, I know, but it truly was born out of what we had at hand in our shop… That said, all these ingredients are out there, and findable with a little research.

Striving for the World’s Best Chocolate

In a remote corner of the global village, an Italian believes he’s developed the best of all chocolate recipes. Claudio Corallo lives on an island off Nigeria and ships his small-batch chocolate around the world.

Most people, says Claudio Corallo, don’t have the slightest idea what chocolate is — or what it can be. The article continues>>

I imagine Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri, the brother and sister founders of Amedei, were drowning in Champagne on the night of the announcement. Nonetheless, they managed to comment: “We are very proud of this award. Our objective shall always remain that of producing the best chocolate in the world, dedicating it to all our supporters. We thank the Academy of Chocolate for this award, and for the seriousness and passion it puts in its worldwide work in search of good quality chocolate.”

Here is their announcement, edited slightly, because while I respect their palates, “harbouring” all those “colourful” extra ‘u’s hogs up RAM on my “computour.”

Bear in mind here that the London Academy does have some vague geographical and other associations with England, and that these are genuine Britons doing the judging, and that these Britons have traditionally shown a distinct proclivity for all chocolates British. Nonetheless, non-Brits and newcomers from around the world have found their way to some of the top prizes in most categories.

For the third year running, the Italian chocolate house Amedei has won the ‘Golden Bean’: the Best “Bean to Bar’ chocolate award, this time with its Toscano 63%. (In 2007 Amedei virtually swept the awards with the Amedei Chuao taking the top marks for Gold, and Amedei Porcelana and Toscano Black 70% also taking gold.) Michel Cluizel’s Maralumi took a gold as well, as did the Valrhona Araguani). Amedei’s Chuao and Porcelana also won golds. However, this year competition was intense with French producer Valrhona, winning gold awards for its Manjari 64% and Guanaja 70%. Valrhona also scored highest and won the only gold in the Best Milk Bar category.

The Academy of Chocolate Awards 2008 received a record over 300 entries from chocolatier sacross Europe and the United States. s. Judging took place in London over 3 days. Judges included Academy members, leading food journalists such as Charles Campion and renowned chefs such as Mark Hix, as well as international chocolate experts from the U.S., Scandinavia and South America.

The ‘Golden Bean’, Best ‘chocolatier’ dark bar (made from existing liquor or couverture)

• Gold Amedei Toscano 63% (Italy)
• Gold Valrhona Manjari 64% (France)
• Gold Valrhona Guanaja 70%
• Gold Amedei Porcelana
• Gold Amedei Chuao
• Silver Amedei Toscano 66%
• Silver Amedei Toscano 70%
• Silver Amedei No 9
• Bronze Valrhona Caraibe 66%
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat St Lucia 72% (UK)
• Bronze Amano Madagascar 70% (USA)

Best House Dark Chocolate bar

• Gold William Curley 65% (UK)
• Gold William Curley 70%
• Silver Rococo Manjari 64% (UK)
• Silver Pamaco Samatari )(Switzerland)
• Silver Pamaco Maracado
• Bronze Demarquette 65% (UK)
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat Venezuela (USA)

Best Milk Chocolate Bar

• Gold Valrhona Jivara 40%
• Silver Amedei Toscano Brown
• Silver William Curley house
• Silver Pamaco Criovemi
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat Dominican republic
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat Madagascar

Best Flavored Dark Chocolate Bar

• Gold Sir Hans Sloane Rose Petal (UK)
• Gold Valrhona Manjari Orange
• Silver Donnelly’s Rose (USA)
• Silver Donnelly’s Lavender
• Silver Donnelly’s Coffee
• Silver Laurent Gerbaud Bergamot (Belgium)
• Silver Sir Hans Sloane Raspberry
• Silver Sir Hans Sloane Almond
• Bronze Green & Black’s Ginger (UK)
• Bronze New Tree 73% Pink Pepper (USA)
• Bronze Sir Hans Sloane Orange sesame

Best Flavored Milk Chocolate Bar

• Gold Amedei hazelnuts
• Silver L’artisan du Chocolate coffee
• Silver William Curley cinnamon
• Silver La Molina Latte menta (Italy)
• Bronze Paul A Young fennel seeds & ginger (UK)

Winning chocolate bars and drinking chocolates in a variety of other categories includeed:

Best Dark Organic Bar

• Silver Valrhona Cao Grande noir 70%
• Silver The Grenada Chocolate Company 71% (Grenada)
• Bronze Rococo house

Best Flavoured Dark Organic Bar

• Gold Theo fig, fennel & almond (USA)
• Bronze Rococo pink peppercorn

Best Milk Organic Bar

• Silver Valrhona Cao Grande lait

Best Flavored Milk Organic Bar

• Bronze Theo vanilla

Best Drinking Chocolate

• Gold Rococo house
• Gold Theo chipotle spiced
• Silver Paul A Young spiced
• Bronze William Curley chilli
• Bronze William Curley spiced
• Bronze Paul A Young house
• Bronze Grenada Smilo
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat original cocoa stick

Truffles are also judged by the London Academy of Chocolate. The winners of the Academy of Chocolate Awards for 2008 load up UK chocolatier William Curley with an impressive number of medals. These included a spectacular 4 Golds in the Best Filled Chocolate category with his Chuao filled chocolate scoring highest. The judges were particularly impressed by his Japanese Black Vinegar ganache and his Sesame ganache.

Best Ganache Filled Chocolate

• Gold William Curley Chuao
• Gold William Curley framboise
• Gold William Curley sesame
• Gold William Curley Japanese black vinegar
• Gold Theo fig & fennel
• Silver William Curley passion fruit & mango
• Silver Sir Hans Sloane passion fruit
• Silver Melt Amedei
• Silver William Curley thyme & honey
• Silver William Curley Early grey
• Silver William Curley szechuan pepper
• Silver Demarquette lemon
• Silver Melt raspberry
• Bronze Melt tonka, vanilla & sesame
• Bronze Melt passion fruit caramel & mandarin
• Bronze Paul Wayne Gregory coconut
• Bronze Melt orange on praline
• Bronze Indulgence orange
• Bronze William Curley wasabi
• Bronze William Curley jasmine
• Bronze Melt raspberry caramel
• Bronze Paul Wayne Gregory coffee
• Bronze William Curley honey
• Bronze Demarquette coffee
• Bronze Sir Hans Sloane Chinese tea
• Bronze William Curley sudachi
• Bronze Damian Allsop water based ganache
• Bronze Demarquette blanc manger, spices, coconut & rum
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat rabot 62%
• Bronze Auberge du Chocolat amedei house
• Bronze Demarquette honey
• Bronze Chococo cherry & kirsch
• Bronze Damian Allsop salty liquorice

Best Filled Praline or Bonbon

• Gold Guido Gobino salt & olive oil
• Gold William Curley juniper & cassis
• Gold William Curley sea salt caramel
• Silver William Curley fleur de sel
• Silver William Curley raspberry
• Silver Paul Wayne Gregory nuts
• Silver Rococo salt caramel
• Silver Theo sage caramel
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat Gianduja square
• Bronze William Curley pistachio

Best Plain Dark Truffle

• Gold William Curley
• Silver Rococo
• Silver Paul A Young
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat

Best Plain Milk Truffle

• Silver William Curley

The judges commented on the very wide range of flavoured chocolates this year, from traditional rose and violet to the fashionable sea salted caramels, as well as spiced chocolates and a move towards Japanese ingredients and natural liquorice. The judges were also impressed by the entries in the drinking chocolate category. Rococo won a Gold for its organic House chocolate as did US chocolate maker Theo for its fair trade organic chocolate chipotle spiced drinking chocolate. The judges remarked how the quality and range of presentation illustrated the revival in chocolate culture. Drinking chocolates were submitted from the UK, Europe and America and were presented as sticks (reminiscent of how the Mayans and Aztecs produced chocolate from as far back as the 10th century), flakes, powder, bars and nuggets.

Sara Jayne Stanes, OBE, chair of the Academy of Chocolate says of the Awards “The awards grow year on year and we were delighted with the number, and quality, of entries we received this year. We hope that these annual Awards will help consumers, retailers and restaurateurs to make enlightened choices about the chocolate they buy.

Thanks folks at the London Chocolate Academy for your brilliant work!

But as with everything in life, the devil is in the detail. Salted 80% dark Italian blended chocolate (Salinae bar by Antica Dolceria Bonajuto) has nothing to do with 80% dark Italian Ecuadorian chocolate a chocolate (Blacksal by Domori), which in turn has virtually nothing in common with a 74% dark Italian blended chocolate served up side by side with Trapani and Cervia sea salts (Cioccolato Fondente al Sale di Cervia by Cioccolato di BruCo).

The power of salt to coax out, elucidate, and expand on the flavor of food does not stop with the savory. Actually, the idea that sweet and savory are somehow opposite is strange, and actually at odds with our natural affinity for diversity and complexity in food. Eat Ethiopian and you will find your fingers plunged in sugar on lamb with tamarind; eat dim sum and half the time you are eating donuts and pork. My grandpa was in love with apple pie with cheddar cheese. At any rate, chocolate is not even a sweet until after it is sweetened, and that can be done with much more deftness than is common.

Jennifer and I have been tinkering with salted chocolate for a while, and after due deliberation (martinis involved), we decided to dive headlong into a vat of 75% dark couverture from an uber premium plantation on the small island state of Sao Tome and Principe, and make our own salted chocolate. I don’t pretend to be neutral about the benefits of salt combined with chocolate, and I know that the sequence of words that follows does have much hope of shaping itself into proper sentence structure, but let’s have it out it anyway: The Meadow’s salted chocolate comes after chomping and melting and smelling and ogling lots and lots of salted dark chocolates such as the above–and many others (and several salted milk chocolates, including a salted goat’s milk chocolate from Austria that I am having a devil of a time getting into the country), Sahagun‘s heart palpitating Palomitapapá, Xocolatl de David’s barnyard brawling bacon salted chocolate to fleur de sel topped chocolate chip cookies dropped off by an especially adorable customer, our own smoked salt-laced chocolate soufflé and chocolate dipped fresh-candied ginger and salt, and the list goes on and on.

So in short, check out the results. Our absolute favorite 75% dark chocolate tempered to perfection, sprinkled lightly with a sea salt that we think reveals something heretofore undiscovered dark chocolate, and then repeated six times:

• Iburi Jio cherrywood roasted salt on dark chocolate (smokey and bacony – Iburi Jio Cherry gourmet salt);
• Pangasinan Star fleur de sel on dark chocolate (delicate, lightly sweet, and balanced – Pangasinan Star gourmet salt);
• Moshio ancient Japanese seaweed salt on dark chocolate (savory, round, full- Amabito No Moshio gourmet salt);
• Grigio di Cervia Italian gros sel style sea salt and dark chocolate (sweet, red berried, champaign sparkly – Grigio di Cervia Gourmet salt);
• Turkish Black Pyramid Mediterranean sea on dark chocolate (subtle, gentle, earthily complex, and the unexpected favorite at a recent salted chocolate class at The Meadow – Turkish Black Pyramid gourmet salt);
• Halen Mon Gold Welsh sea salt smoked with ancient Welsh Oak and dark chocolate (warm, caramely, with delicate tobacco – Halen Mon Gold gourmet sea salt).

I just put them up on our website, so you can give them a try. Play soundtrack. Think of some Clint Eastwood-style fade-away into the gloaming as a slim, somber rider canters off amidst the faint yapping of coyotes.

Looking for something delicate? Try Valrhona’s Chuao Bar from 2002. Looking for something with perfect, silky body? Try Valrhona’s 2002 cru bar from the Chuao valley in Venezuela. In the mood for understated yet superb balance of flavors? Why not the I suggest the 2002 Chuao Chocolate Bar by Valrhona? Looking for the perfect, brilliant mirror, crisp snap, lovely fragrance? Try Valrhona 2002 Chuao Chocolate Bar. Does eating one of the best freaking chocolate bars on the face of the earth strike your fancy? Valrhona 2002 Chuao cru chocolate bar.

Just want a dark chocolate bar that is super freaking yummy? Valrhona 2002 Chuao chocolate bar.

So, imagine my reaction to reading Bill Buford‘s encomium to Frederick Schilling, founder of Dagoba Organic Chocolate, printed in this week’s New Yorker.

Buford writes: “Some bars have a harvest year. I got one from an Internet supplier, a 2002, made from ChuaoValley beans in Venezuela, three years past its sell-by date. Suspecting a gimmick, I ate it to confirm its staleness. I was surprised. It seemed fresher than the other bars I’d bought.”

“Seemed fresher?” That’s it? Buford bites into a piece of chocolate making history, and his comment is, “seemed fresher?” What the hell…

I love Buford as much as the next guy, but his economy of words here comes at the expense of his readers. One wonders if Buford, eating a seven course meal at Le Bernardin, summarizes the experience with, “Seemed Eric Ripert used fish.”

The quality of Chuao chocolate stems from the convergence of a variety of advantageous conditions, including soil, climate, and a remoteness that has prevented the invasion of lesser cultivation practices and lesser strains of Theobroma cacao. I know of only three ways to eat chocolate from the legendary Chuao region at the top of the Aragua valley in the north of Venezuela. The Bonnat Chuao single origin dark chocolate bar (75% cacao), the Amedei Chuao single origin dark chocolate bar (70% cacao), and Valhrona’s Chuao bar released way back in 2003.

Several months back I attended a blind chocolate tasting organized by Nick Zukin (who blogs Extramsg – Portland Food, Restaurant, and Market Guide, and who is also a co-founder of the “It’s-about-time-Portland-got-a-great-Jewish-deli” Kenny & Zukes Delicatessen). About 50 dark chocolates were tasted, including all three Chuao bars, all grouped together anonymously (we weren’t told they were the Chuao bars). About 20 chocolate professionals from all walks of Chocolate life in Portland were assembled. (Really, Nick, that was a cool event.)

Afterwards, we turned our notes in to Nick and then shared our thoughts amongst ourselves. Informally, at least, it was clear that the Chuao plates were rated the highest by the largest contingent of the tasters, though there were some wild and rugged chocolate bars by Steve DeVries that also held sway. While I had always assumed the Amedei Chuao bar would whop the others–it is nearly twice the price and enjoys major international celebrity status to boot–AT LEAST HALF of the Chuao fans settled on the Valrhona’s 2002 cru Chuao 65% dark chocolate bar as their favorite of the entire event.

I could spill a lot of ink on the subject, but because I am mainly writing this because I want to dance merrily on a few picked-apart words by a famous and talented writer, and for the sake of keeping harmony with myself, I’ll stick my notes posted on our website: “Perfect mirror to the surface of the bar, not the slightest hint of bloom or age. Crisp snap, and then the aromas come out! Caramels, spices, a miraculous hint of banana, and a long, long complex finish. In terms of vintage, this knocks the socks off Valhrona’s 2001.” Sadly, I don’t have any 2001 on hand, but it would be interesting to see if the 2001 cru bar seems fresh.